The answer is that our postwar prosperity is built moreon gambling than on honest productive industry. Gambling was the result of war, born in wartime and coming from the sudden demand for technique machinery and goods, which paid those who happened to hold them enormous marginal rents. The chance tothe gambler, the promoter and the manipulatorof industry has come during the reconstruction since the war, in the monopoly of land and homes, in the manipulation of industrial power, in the use of new inventions and discoveries, in the reorganization of corporate ownership.

I have rejoiced in keeping down the annual budget, in reducing taxes, and paying off the national debt, because the influence of such action is felt in every home in the land.

When Henry Ford and the installment contract brought the cost of the automobile down to negotiable terms, it became something that people were willing to work for, save for, strive for.

The effect was two-fold. It stimulated business, and it suffused the country with the visible appearanceof a prosperity in which everybody seemed to share.

There never can be equality of rewards or possessions so long as the human plan contains varied talents and differing degrees of industry and thrift, but ours ought to be a country free from the great blotches of distressed poverty.

Most of us have some superficial idea as to the causes underlying the prosperity of the past six or eight years, but our views are likely to be colored by the prejudices, the political tenets, the occupation or previous condition of servitudeof the individual expressing the opinion. To the banker it might seem that the tremendous gold stock of the country and the great expansion in credit have been the basic causes of our prosperity. To the head of a labor union it might seem that high wages and the gradual rise in the standard of living in this country were the basic reasons.The manufacturer would undoubtedly explain our prosperity by pointing to the development of mass production, which has made possible the consumption of more goods at lower prices.

The nation’s economy reached astoundingproduction, consumption, and stock market records, rendering the severepostwar recession a bad memory,except,unfortunately,for farmers, working-class laborers, and African Americans and other minority groups.

“With the mild socialists the program outlined stops there. But with the radical socialists it goes on to the absorption and “nationalizing” of the farms.

In Bol-shevik Russia every instru-ment available for the exercise of force and power is in the possession of [the] gov-ernment

Not alone should states and municipalities prohibit the display of the flag of anarchy, but the federal government should take any steps within its power to crush anarchy in whatever form it may take.

And the New York police are ready with valiant nightsticks to enforce it, backed by 3,000,000 loyal citizens willing to assist. . . .

The liberty of the world has just been won at an awful sacrifice of blood and treasure.

native-born citizens

There wereradicals, of course,whoadvocated the overthrow of American capitalism, especially after the 1917 Russian Revolution, but who were they?

The conscience of the people